Carol Shields | The Guardianhttps://www.theguardian.com/books/carolshields
Latest news and features from theguardian.com, the world's leading liberal voiceen-gbGuardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. 2016Fri, 09 Dec 2016 15:45:02 GMT2016-12-09T15:45:02Zen-gbGuardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. 2016The Guardianhttps://assets.guim.co.uk/images/guardian-logo-rss.c45beb1bafa34b347ac333af2e6fe23f.pnghttps://www.theguardian.com
Top 10 books for the broken-heartedhttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/10/top-10-books-for-the-broken-hearted-valentines-day
<p>If Valentine’s Day is an unwelcome reminder of what has become of your love life, you can find solace at the bookshop. Here are 10 literary highlights for the lovelorn</p><p>Some relationships ebb away, petering to their end. There is loneliness and ambivalence after this kind of breakup, no doubt. But there is another altogether more visceral kind – the brutal, sudden and sometimes unexpected end to love, which is experienced like a death. For this, some serious heartbreak literature is required. The heroine in my new novel <a href="https://bookshop.theguardian.com/catalog/product/view/id/370607/">Missing, Presumed</a>, suffers just such an emotional karate chop. Ghosting appears to be the modern term for it, though it’s as old as the hills. In Thomas Hardy’s day, someone would stop cycling to your village. Today, you can find yourself cut dead by WhatsApp.<br></p><p> <span>Related: </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/07/missing-presumed-review-susie-steiner">Missing, Presumed review – lonely detective seeks EM Forster fan…</a> </p><p> <span>Related: </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/13/top-10-failed-romances-in-fiction-anna-karenina-tolstoy-women-in-love-lawrence">Top 10 failed romances in fiction</a> </p><p>To really be glad he/she is gone, revel in some 'Oops, I married a sociopath' literature</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/10/top-10-books-for-the-broken-hearted-valentines-day">Continue reading...</a>FictionBooksCultureCharlotte BrontëMaggie O'FarrellCarol ShieldsElena FerranteWendy CopeDiana AthillValentine's DayWed, 10 Feb 2016 13:06:40 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/10/top-10-books-for-the-broken-hearted-valentines-dayPhotograph: AlamyPhotograph: AlamySusie Steiner2016-02-10T13:06:40ZCelebrated writers who died in the noughtieshttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/jan/02/noughties-writers-obituaries-review
A celebration of the great writers who died in the past decade<p>JG Ballard (1930-2009) by Michael Moorcock</p><p>My friendship with JG Ballard lasted about 50 years and was not always the easiest to maintain. In the early days at least we were naturally confrontational. Happily, we were united in what we wished to confront, if not always agreed on how best to go about it. We were both in those days "family men" and we shared a love for our children. Jimmy's love was almost mystical. When fathers were discouraged from attending births, he had insisted at being present at his children's. We had some fine times – Jimmy and Mary, Hilary and me – arguing into the night until it was time to go home. They'd climb into his battered but romantic Armstrong-Siddeley and head for Shepperton, or Jimmy would drive us back to Notting Hill.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/jan/02/noughties-writers-obituaries-review">Continue reading...</a>Don PatersonBooksCultureSaul BellowJG BallardDavid Foster WallaceSimon GrayArthur MillerHarold PinterWG SebaldCarol ShieldsMuriel SparkHunter S ThompsonJohn UpdikeSat, 02 Jan 2010 00:08:38 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/jan/02/noughties-writers-obituaries-reviewPhotograph: Martyn Goddard/Rex FeaturesJ.G. Ballard photographed at his home in Shepperton. Photograph: Martyn Goddard/Rex FeaturesPhotograph: Martyn Goddard/Rex FeaturesJ.G. Ballard photographed at his home in Shepperton. Photograph: Martyn Goddard/Rex FeaturesMargaret Atwood, John Banville, Don Paterson, Carol Ann Duffy, Richard Eyre, Ian Jack, Blake Morrison, Colm Tóibín, Ahdaf Soueif and others2010-01-02T00:08:38ZCarol Shieldshttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/jun/11/carolshields
(1935-2003)<p><strong>1935-2003</strong></p><p>"I don't believe in ordinary or extraordinary people, unless we are all extraordinary."</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/jun/11/carolshields">Continue reading...</a>Carol ShieldsBooksCultureTue, 22 Jul 2008 14:39:49 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/jun/11/carolshieldsGuardian Staff2008-07-22T14:39:49ZFiction, April 10https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/apr/10/carolshields
<p><strong> Sammy's Hill</strong></p><p> Kristin Gore</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/apr/10/carolshields">Continue reading...</a>BooksCultureCarol ShieldsSat, 09 Apr 2005 23:42:34 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/apr/10/carolshieldsAlex Heminsley2005-04-09T23:42:34ZCritical eye: Jul 31https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jul/31/peterackroyd.francoismariearouetdevoltaire
Critical eye<p>"This collection offers a timely reminder of the complexity, subtlety and sheer intelligence of her humane vision," wrote Samantha Matthews in the Times Literary Supplement of Carol Shields's Collected Stories. The book includes "Segue", a chapter from a novel left unfinished when Shields died last year, which Matthews deemed "a fittingly mature and meditative farewell". Not every story is perfect, she added, but "even a Shields story that doesn't quite come off is rewarding to read". "The book is a delight," enthused Erica Wagner in the Times, "and a reminder that ... Shields was nearly always able to find the threads that bind us to each other or allow us to rediscover the meaning of our lives." </p><p>"The Lambs of London, Peter Ackroyd's 12th novel, displays his characteristic trademarks on almost every page," observed Neel Mukherjee in the Times: "fiction that takes off like a madly inventive fugue from the base of real, historical figures; lean, tight, pitch-perfect prose [and] an intricately textured and calibrated psychogeography of London." However, "two-thirds of the way through a gripping story, the novel peters out". "The London of 1795 is evoked through a series of smells," noted Lindsay Duguid in the Sunday Times, "of bonfires and burnt toast, bruised oranges, the stench of horses and of human closeness." Sarah Burton in the Spectator was drawn to a scene in which a 17-year-old enjoys "a brief but satisfying union" on the roof of a carriage with a lady's maid. "This exchange between William and Beryl ... is as refreshing as the air that blows about them." </p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jul/31/peterackroyd.francoismariearouetdevoltaire">Continue reading...</a>BooksCulturePeter AckroydFrancois Marie Arouet de VoltaireCarol ShieldsShort storiesFri, 30 Jul 2004 23:42:24 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jul/31/peterackroyd.francoismariearouetdevoltaireGuardian Staff2004-07-30T23:42:24ZObserver review: Collected Stories by Carol Shieldshttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jul/18/fiction.carolshields
Women reading, couples talking, writers writing... in elegant, elegiac stories, Carol Shields's characters keep despair at bay with all kinds of language<p><strong>Collected Stories</strong><br>by Carol Shields<br>Fourth Estate £10.99, pp595</p><p>There is a great pleasure in seeing how one thing led to another in Carol Shields's writing. The more you read of her stories the more you sense her delight in making connections, moving things on. The three volumes collected here, and published a year after her death, are full of tiny leaps of faith, made in order to give a shape and purpose to things.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jul/18/fiction.carolshields">Continue reading...</a>BooksFictionCultureCarol ShieldsSat, 17 Jul 2004 23:09:27 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jul/18/fiction.carolshieldsTim Adams2004-07-17T23:09:27ZReview: Collected Stories by Carol Shieldshttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jul/03/fiction.carolshields
Carol Shields's short stories show depths some critics overlooked, says Hermione Lee<p><strong> Collected Stories</strong><br> by Carol Shields <br>593pp, Fourth Estate <br>£18.99 </p><p>In the last years of her life, Carol Shields went on working. She published a remarkable novel, Unless, a volume of stories, and a short, sympathetic life of Jane Austen. The biography dealt feelingly with the frustrations, deprivations and solitude of a great woman writer with no literary confidantes and a restrictive family life. The novel gave the story of a woman writer of light novels, whose daughter had run away from home to adopt an extremist life of "goodness" - either of madness or sainthood. The novelist, Reta Winters, was writing angry, unsent letters about the exclusion and powerlessness of women. Reta had already made an appearance in one of the late stories, "A Scarf", in which she says, of herself and other women writers, "Not one of us was going to get what we wanted." The same phrase recurs in Unless. </p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jul/03/fiction.carolshields">Continue reading...</a>BooksFictionCultureCarol ShieldsShort storiesFri, 02 Jul 2004 23:37:38 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jul/03/fiction.carolshieldsHermione Lee2004-07-02T23:37:38ZSegue by Carol Shieldshttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/dec/27/originalwriting.fiction
Carol Shields was working on a new book when she died in July. Here, we publish an exclusive extract from this unfinished novel, in which a Chicago poet contemplates the sonnet, family, and intimations of mortality<p>Something is always saying to me: be plain. Be clear. But then something else, very much else, interferes and unjoints my good intentions. Max and I were out yesterday morning, Sunday, a simple enough errand in our neighbourhood. We "sallied forth" to buy a loaf of good seed bread and a potted plant, chrysanthemums in our case, with the smashed little faces that our daughter so admires, that bitter bronze colour, matching the tablecloth she was sure to be laying right that moment out there in Oak Park. Eleven o'clock; my husband Max and I would be expected at half past 12. We always arrive carrying a modest gift of some sort.</p><p>There, at the fall market, stimulated, probably, by the hint of frost in the air, I felt a longing to register the contained, isolated instant we had manufactured and entered, the purchase of the delicious hard-crusted bread at a particular local bodega, the decision over the potted plant next door at the florist - this was what I wanted to preserve - but an intrusive overview camera (completely imaginary, needless to say) bumped against me, so that instead of feeling the purity of the coins leaving my hand, I found myself watching the two of us, a man and woman of similar height, both of them in their middle 60s, both slightly stooped - you'd hardly notice unless you were looking - and dressed in bright colours, making a performance of their simple act, paying for their rounded and finite loaf of bread and then, next door, the burst of rusty chrysanthemums.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/dec/27/originalwriting.fiction">Continue reading...</a>BooksOriginal writingFictionCultureCarol ShieldsSat, 27 Dec 2003 12:31:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/dec/27/originalwriting.fictionPhotograph: Rene Johnston/APCarol Shields in 1999. Photograph: Rene Johnston/APPhotograph: Rene Johnston/APCarol Shields in 1999. Photograph: Rene Johnston/APCarol Shields2003-12-27T12:31:00ZMargaret Atwood on the late Carol Shieldshttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jul/26/fiction.margaretatwood
Carol Shields, who died last week, wrote books that were full of delights, says Margaret Atwood<p>The beloved Canadian author Carol Shields died on July 16 at her home in Victoria, British Columbia, after a long battle with cancer. She was 68. The enormous media coverage given to her and the sadness expressed by her many readers paid tribute to the high esteem in which she was held in her own country, but her death made the news all around the world. </p><p>Conscious as she was of the vagaries of fame and the element of chance in any fortune, she would have viewed that with a certain irony, but she would also have found it deeply pleasing. She knew about the darkness, but - both as an author and as a person - she held on to the light. "She was just a luminous person, and that would be important and persist even if she hadn't written anything," said her friend and fellow author Alice Munro. </p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jul/26/fiction.margaretatwood">Continue reading...</a>BooksFictionCultureMargaret AtwoodCarol ShieldsSat, 26 Jul 2003 22:12:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jul/26/fiction.margaretatwoodPhotograph: Vince Talotta/APCarol Shields. Photograph: Vince Talotta/APPhotograph: Vince Talotta/APCarol Shields. Photograph: Vince Talotta/APGuardian Staff2003-07-26T22:12:00ZRereading: The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Sparkhttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jul/26/classics.fiction
Carol Shields on Muriel Spark's warnings in The Girls of Slender Means - and why she missed them first time around<p>Life is finite, but the number of freshly published novels seems not to be. Here, at any rate, they come pouring into the house at a speed that outstrips my habit of slow reading, my rather sluggishly determined registration of vocabulary, form and even punctuation.</p><p>With a line-up of new books waiting to be consumed - books piled on my desk, on my bedside table, on the floor of my office - I thought it wasteful to reread an old book. But Muriel Spark's The Girls of Slender Means was winking at me from a bookstore display in a witty new cover and a beguiling small format; this was a book I could read in one evening. </p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jul/26/classics.fiction">Continue reading...</a>BooksClassicsFictionCultureMuriel SparkCarol ShieldsSat, 26 Jul 2003 16:37:55 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jul/26/classics.fictionCarol Shields2003-07-26T16:37:55ZTribute: Carol Shields 1935-2003https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jul/20/fiction.shopping
Tim Adams on Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Carol Shields, who has died after a five-year battle with cancer<p>In the years after she was first diagnosed as having breast cancer in 1998, Carol Shields wrote a biography of Jane Austen, a collection of short stories and a novel, Unless, which should have won the Booker Prize. Before her death, on Wednesday, aged 68, she was in the middle of another book; there was never anything better to do.</p><p>In announcing their bereavement, Shields's son and four daughters expressed their sadness not only for the loss of their beloved mother but also for the novels that would now remain unwritten. In fact, you imagine the two things were mostly indistinguishable. When Carol Shields wrote, it often felt as natural as breathing, and as essential.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jul/20/fiction.shopping">Continue reading...</a>FictionBooksPulitzer prizeAwards and prizesCultureCarol ShieldsSun, 20 Jul 2003 14:39:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jul/20/fiction.shoppingPhotograph: Public DomainA detail from the cover of Unless by Carol ShieldsPhotograph: Public DomainA detail from the cover of Unless by Carol ShieldsTim Adams2003-07-20T14:39:00ZUnless: paragraphshttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jul/19/carolshields
John Mullan concludes his analysis of Unless by Carol Shields, who died this week. Part four: paragraphs<p>The eager student of fiction might read many books of narratology or guides to the work of leading novelists and never find any account of this most elemental element of fiction. Yet what most fundamentally shapes the very rhythm of reading? The passionate conviction of a stretch of Jane Eyre is enacted in the pulse of its short, emphatic paragraphs. The experience of reading late Henry James is of the length of his paragraphs. He expatiates for 500, even 1,000, words without drawing breath, tirelessly making his analyses more subtle.</p><p>The first-person narrative of Reta Winters, Carol Shields's ordinary heroine, often has a rueful or self-deprecating rhythm. Speculations stop short; wishfulness is curtailed. Three or four paragraphs build to an anti-climax or a reversal: a very brief paragraph waves away what was being said.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jul/19/carolshields">Continue reading...</a>BooksCultureCarol ShieldsSat, 19 Jul 2003 16:59:58 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jul/19/carolshieldsJohn Mullan2003-07-19T16:59:58ZCarol Shields dies at 68https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jul/18/artsfeatures.carolshields
<p>The Canadian novelist Carol Shields, whose work found a place both in heavyweight literary criticism and beside chick-lit novels on the bestseller stands, has died of complications of breast cancer, aged 68. </p><p>Her last book, Unless, written when she knew she was probably dying, was an international success, nominated for many literary prizes, including the Booker, and the Orange, which she won in 1998 for Larry's Party. </p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jul/18/artsfeatures.carolshields">Continue reading...</a>BooksWorld newsCultureCarol ShieldsLiterary criticismFri, 18 Jul 2003 16:30:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jul/18/artsfeatures.carolshieldsMaev Kennedy, arts and heritage correspondent2003-07-18T16:30:00ZObituary: Carol Shieldshttps://www.theguardian.com/news/2003/jul/18/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries
Gifted writer famed for her masterful depictions of ordinary life<p>It is difficult to imagine two writers with more different ways of looking at the world, and the influence of geography on style was perhaps what Shields was alluding to when she said in an interview that Canada had been a "very good country for writers. We don't have a long literary tradition. People aren't intimidated by the ghosts of Hemingway and Faulkner. We're not big on heroes, either. The concept of heroes is alien, and I think that's a very telling piece of our national ethos - no one deserves to be better than anyone else." </p><p>That final phrase perhaps defines Shields's fiction - her 10 novels, including The Stone Diaries and Larry's Party, three collections each of short stories and poems, and several plays, biography and critical studies - better than any other. She was frequently praised for her masterful depiction of ordinary lives, and for her ability to present complex and subtle subject material in a deceptively light, comic manner. </p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2003/jul/18/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries">Continue reading...</a>BooksCultureCarol ShieldsFri, 18 Jul 2003 16:26:55 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/news/2003/jul/18/guardianobituaries.artsobituariesAlex Clark2003-07-18T16:26:55ZObituary: Carol Shieldshttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jul/17/carolshields1
An astute observer of the everyday, whose sharp and witty novels won her numerous prizes<p>The writer Carol Shields, who has died of cancer at the age of 68, did not start life as a Canadian, despite becoming one of the country's most distinguished literary figures; in fact, she was born and brought up in the same Chicago suburb as Ernest Hemingway. It's difficult to imagine two writers with more different ways of looking at the world, and the influence of geography on style was perhaps what Shields was alluding to when she once said in an interview that Canada had been a "very good country for writers. We don't have a long literary tradition. People aren't intimidated by the ghost of Hemingway and Faulkner. We're not big on heroes, either. The concept of heroes is alien, and I think that's a very telling piece of our national ethos - no one deserves to be better than anyone else".</p><p> That final phrase perhaps defines Shields's fiction better than any other. She wrote 10 novels, including The Stone Diaries and Larry's Party, three collections each of short stories and poems and several plays, plus biography and critical studies, and was frequently praised for her masterful depiction of ordinary lives and for her ability to present complex and subtle subject material in a deceptively light, comic manner. Her achievement was to explore everyday triumphs and tragedies in a way that seemed anything but pedestrian, bringing to the task a wit and quiet acerbity that continually cast light on the business of making lives into stories, both in and outside of books.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jul/17/carolshields1">Continue reading...</a>BooksCultureCarol ShieldsThu, 17 Jul 2003 14:09:59 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jul/17/carolshields1Alex Clark2003-07-17T14:09:59ZNovelist Carol Shields dieshttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jul/17/carolshields
<p>The Canadian novelist Carol Shields has died aged 68, her publishers announced today. </p><p>Shields was a prolific writer, producing 10 novels, three collections of short stories, as well as poetry, plays and critical studies. She won numerous awards, including the Orange prize for Larry's Party and the Pulitzer for The Stone Diaries, and was twice shortlisted for the Booker. </p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jul/17/carolshields">Continue reading...</a>BooksWorld newsFilmCultureCarol ShieldsThu, 17 Jul 2003 13:46:49 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jul/17/carolshieldsSean Clarke2003-07-17T13:46:49ZUnless: the dénouementhttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jul/12/carolshields
John Mullan analyses Unless by Carol Shields. Week three: the dénouement<p>Every novel ends, but not every novel has a dénouement. The word is from the French for "unknotting" and refers to the resolving or untying of a story's complications. Dénouements occur in novels where the writer has created problems that have to be solved. A dénouement is not just a conclusion, it is also an explanation, belatedly providing information that has previously been held back.</p><p>Dénouements are necessary to our satisfaction, yet can seem unsatisfyingly imposed from outside. Thus novels with complicated plots will sometimes invent a character whose only role is providentially to arrive to reveal the schemes of the villainous and the true parentage of the virtuous. Fielding's Tom Jones and Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby are notable examples. Elsewhere, the author intervenes. Unless bleakly imagines a situation without any evident solution. How will Shields untie her tight knot?</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jul/12/carolshields">Continue reading...</a>BooksCultureCarol ShieldsSat, 12 Jul 2003 16:58:14 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jul/12/carolshieldsJohn Mullan2003-07-12T16:58:14ZUnless: self-consciousnesshttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jul/05/carolshields
John Mullan analyses Unless by Carol Shields. Week two: self-consciousness<p>It is not uncommon for novels to have novelists as leading characters. Some, from Dickens's David Copperfield to Ian McEwan's Atonement, tell the "back-narrative" of how a character has become a novelist. In these cases, learning to write fiction is inextricable from a larger narrative of self-discovery. Others, from Trollope's The Way We Live Now to Martin Amis's The Information, satirise the business of manufacturing fiction and attempting to fit it to the public's tastes. Here the novelist observes mockingly, with an insider's jaundiced knowledge. In Unless, however, the author's own case is more central. The novel sharply, inescapably, focuses a reader's attention on the ambitions and limits of Shields's own fiction.</p><p>The narrator of Unless, Reta Winters, has come late to novel writing after acting for years as translator for a famous woman of letters, Danielle Westerman. In her forties, Reta writes a slim novel with the somewhat gauche title My Thyme Is Up. It is unexpectedly successful. Sales are good; reviews are complimentary, if condescending (" 'Oddly appealing,' the New York Times Book Review said"); she wins one of the lesser literary prizes. During the course of Unless, Reta is writing a sequel, often as a distraction from domestic calamity - her eldest daughter's inexplicable withdrawal from family, society, even life itself.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jul/05/carolshields">Continue reading...</a>BooksCultureCarol ShieldsSat, 05 Jul 2003 16:56:10 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jul/05/carolshieldsJohn Mullan2003-07-05T16:56:10ZJohn Mullan on the chapter headings in Carol Shields's Unlesshttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jun/28/carolshields
John Mullan analyses a notable novel available in paperback as a service to reading groups. This month he is looking at Unless by Carol Shields. Week one: chapter headings<p>Unless is divided into 37 short chapters, each titled with some unremarkable conjunction or adverb or preposition: Hence, Hardly, Yet, Next. These are the small, unobserved words that string stories together. The structure of Shields's novel draws attention to them, as if letting you see life's unnoticed stitching. In the novel's final chapter - which wryly fends off too happy an ending with the title "Not Yet" - the narrator, Reta Winters, herself a novelist, calls them "little chips of grammar". They cement isolated events into a narrative. </p><p>They also enable a sentence to go off in some new direction. Nevertheless, Yet, Instead: words that leave behind what was being said. The headings in this novel allow the narrator to wander (but only apparently wander) away from the desperate fact that would Otherwise (another chapter heading) drive her to despair. The eldest of her three daughters has dropped out of university and become a silent beggar, seated on a Toronto pavement all day, sleeping in a hostel for vagrants at night. Her unintelligible withdrawal from her family, and seemingly from life itself, is constantly at the narrator's heart. The novel is Reta's story of herself around, beside or apart from that fact. Much of the time, she worries instead (as in "Instead") about the manipulable fortunes of the protagonists of her novel. </p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jun/28/carolshields">Continue reading...</a>BooksCultureCarol ShieldsSat, 28 Jun 2003 16:53:40 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jun/28/carolshieldsJohn Mullan2003-06-28T16:53:40ZCarol Shields heads Orange longlisthttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/mar/17/carolshields
<p>The longlist for this year's Orange Prize for fiction, awarded for the best novel of the year written by a woman, pits difficult second novels against a mature work by veteran author Carol Shields.</p><p>Shields, who won the prize in 1998 with Larry's Party, is chosen for Unless, an angry, moving novel about sexism and the fragility of domestic contentment. The other frontrunners are Zadie Smith's follow-up to White Teeth, The Autograph Man, an examination of our modern obsession with celebrity and individualism which received mixed reviews; and Donna Tartt's The Little Friend, about the aftermath of a murder in the deep south as seen through a child's eyes. This long-awaited second novel from the author of The Secret History also received some lukewarm notices.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/mar/17/carolshields">Continue reading...</a>BooksCultureCarol ShieldsDonna TarttMon, 17 Mar 2003 15:12:19 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/mar/17/carolshieldsStaff and agencies2003-03-17T15:12:19Z